rand’s esoteric otr

Now a bit of comedy, courtesy of “Hancock’s Half Hour”, an influential BBC situation comedy broadcast from 1954 through 1961.  It was one of the first BBC comedy series that took the form of a sitcom, something fairly common at the time here in the States.

“The Jewel Robbery” was originally broadcast on the BBC as program 2 of the 3rd Series of “Hancock’s Half Hour” on October 26, 1955 and was recorded on October 3, 1955.  It was distributed to foreign markets as Program 18 in the series by the BBC Transcription Service in the late 1950s.

The show was dubbed from an original shellac 16″ BBC Transcription Service set, matrix numbers 16PH87870 and 16PH87871.  So far, these, along with some “Goon Show” discs distributed by the BBC around the same time period, are the latest shellac transcription pressings I’ve found.  It’s curious they weren’t pressing these on vinyl at this late date.

Update, 6/25/2009 - Corrected post based on information from Jim Exley. I incorrectly identified this episode as “The New Car” from December 7, 1954.

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Here’s another entry in “The Passing Parade”, John Nesbitt’s quarter hour of interesting stories with an ironic twist.

Program 19 looks at two alchemists that tried to create gold from mercury and lead, but wound up discovering something just as significant.

The show was transferred from an original vinyl MGM Radio Attractions transcription, matrix number MGM JN 1619.

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Recently, I’ve been buying some old time radio transcriptions from another collector.  Once in a while, he throws in odd discs for free - parts of shows with missing discs or acetates with test material or sound effects and music that were tossed from local radio stations.

A few of these discs came from WREN, a radio station in Lawrence, Kansas, and include excerpts and around three almost complete episodes of a local music program, “Ted West and His Range Riders”.  So, here’s one of the discs with the Range Riders program of September 2, 1946.  The group performs songs such as  “Back in the Saddle Again”, “Take Your Girlie to the Movies (If You Can’t Make Love at Home)” and “You Don’t Love Me But I’ll Always Care”.

WREN was originally located in Lawrence, Kansas, before moving to Topeka in 1947.  The station was purchased by Presidential candidate Alf Landon in the early 1950s and was in operation through the late 1980s.

There’s a bit of WREN history that survives in Topeka - a giant wren statue that used to be perched on top of the radio station.  (You can see another picture of it here.)  The bird was sold off as a fundraiser when a Christian radio station bought the building in the early 1990s and was the statue was purchased by a local historical society.  If you’re visiting Topeka, you can also take a gander at a giant meat cleaver and Truckhenge that are located nearby.

The show was transferred from an original WREN acetate.  Note that, at the beginning, you’ll hear brief excerpts from an episode of “Easy Aces” and an NBC news broadcast that are also on the disc, probably recorded to test some equipment at the station.  The “Range Riders” show starts about one minute into the file.

Apologies for the rough sound, but the years haven’t been kind to this one of a kind disc.  I’ve got a couple more Range Riders shows I’ll post in coming months if folks are interested.

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I’ve not been able to dig up much info on “California Melodies”, a program of light popular music heard on Mutual in the 1940s.  Looking over a log of the surviving episodes of the show at otrsite.com, this broadcast appears to be from the 1948 run of the series.

A sustaining half hour, the program features music by Harry Zimmerman with the Little Sisters and Vernan Polk with guest Pat Russo.  First song on the show is “It’s a Good Day”.  The program is a good example of what I’d call a “Hollywood style” approach to popular orchestral music - a little lighter and upbeat and sounding a bit like the arrangements from movie musicals of the time.

The mp3 was transferred directly from an original Don Lee Productions-KHJ vinyl transcription, matrix numbers DL 31048-1 and DL 31048-2.

I’m puzzled on why the show was pressed on vinyl - perhaps it was done as an audition for potential advertisers or for one of the performers.

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Update - I accidentally attached Pgm 14 to this post - it’s fixed now with the correct episode number.

Continuing our weekly look in on Tom Collins starring in “The Adventures of Frank Race”, we give a spin to Program 15 in post.  Race becomes entangled in “The Adventure of the Embittered Secretary”, a mystery concerning a playboy and some missing jewelry.

The show was transferred from an original Bruce Eells and Associates vinyl transcription set, matrix numbers UR-145245 A6 and UR-145246 A6.

Note that there were some engineering problems with the original recording, with sound levels varying quite a bit -  it sounds like the disc cutting engineer was asleep at the wheel or the mixing board was having problems when the show was recorded.

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This week, we feature a guest post from fellow otr collector Daniel Sears who shares a rare 78 rpm record set with us containing an “audition” for the soap opera “Claudia”.  Daniel is the Creative Director for GrumpyFILMS, inc in New York.

Many thanks for the show and blog post - I hope we can hear more from Daniel’s collection in coming weeks. - Randy

“They saw…they met…they married each other. Six whole weeks ago.”

So goes the intro for this audition episode of “Claudia”, the well-known daytime serial sponsored by “your friendly neighbor who bottles Coca-Cola.”

This audition program, however, seems to take plot points and parts of scripts that would later be broadcast across several episodes and squishes them together into one 15-minute program.

In this visit with Claudia and David, we hear the craziness that ensues when David has to get up early for an appointment in Connecticut, and he discovers what Claudia has done to his socks and his breakfast. Later, Claudia goes shopping for a dog with her mother, and in the third segment we see what happens when David comes home and discovers what kind of dog Claudia has bought.

Looking at the radioGOLDINdex, my guess would be that parts of this script would later be used in programs broadcast on 9/30/47 (”Waking Up Early”), 10/13/47 (”Claudia Ruins Breakfast”), and 10/14/47 (”Claudia Buys David a Big Dog”). However, I was not able to find postings of these episodes online to confirm that.

The broadcast episodes of “Claudia” featured Kathryn Bard and Paul Crabtree, with Joe King announcing. Comparing this recording with snippets found online, it sounds like Ms. Bard is the only one also found on here. No cast list is announced, so does anyone have any guesses as to who the other actors are? Maybe the actor playing David didn’t make the final cast because of the couple of goofs he makes…

This file was transfered directly from a pair of vinyl 78 rpm discs with great maroon/brown marbeled vinyl. The surface noise gets a little thick in spots, but I hope you’ll enjoy this rare program.

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This week, we skip ahead to Program 14 in our ongoing series, “The Adventures of Frank Race”.  My set of original transcriptions is almost complete, but is unfortunately missing a few programs.  If you want to catch up on the shows that are missing, someone has uploaded them at archive.org; however, the archive.org copies were made from multi-generation tape dubs, some transferred to digital at the wrong speed.

However, here on the blog we’re going to hear Program 14, “The Adventure of the Vanishing Favorite”, in a direct dub from a Burce Eells and Associates vinyl transcription set.  In this episode, Race, played by Tom Collins, finds mystery at the race track.  Funny business with horse racing seems to be a common plot device for many old time radio detective shows and most got around to a race horse plot at least once during their run.

The matrix numbers of these transcription sides are UR-145239 A6 and UR-145240 A6.

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“GI Journal” was one of several shows, like “Command Performance”, recorded especially for our fighting troops during World War II.  There’s the usual mix of fast paced comedy and music, but “GI Journal” loosely uses the format of the host editing a newspaper.

Program 12 in the series from October 9, 1943 features host Bing Crosby with announcer Harry Mitchell, Ish Kabibble offering poems and Arthur Q. Bryan with advice to the lovelorn, along with comedy Jerry Collonna, songs from Georgia Carroll, and John Scott Trotter and His Orchestra.  Bing kicks off the show with “Thank Your Lucky Stars”.  Mel Blanc plays a GI trying out for a position as a Supply Sergeant and the Mad Russian and Bing do a routine about a salvage operation.

Our mp3 was dubbed directly from an original AFRS vinyl transcription.

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Let’s start off our posts this week with something to get your feet moving.  It’s the Mutual series “Dixieland Matinee”, a daily quarter hour of upbeat Dixieland Jazz broadcast in the late 40s and early 50s as part of a kind of nostalgia boom for Boogie Woogie and Dixieland.

In the episode of May 1, 1952, as broadcast on AFRS as program 170 in the series, you can almost hear the Flappers dancing in the speakeasy with Preacher Rollo and the Five Saints with Marie Marcus on piano perform “That’s a Plenty”, “On the Sunny Side of the Street”, and other tunes.

The show was transferred from an original AFRS vinyl transcription and appears to be a lost episode of this rare series.

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I’d like to give a special acknowledgment to David Kiner for this week’s mp3 transfer.  I recently arranged a trade for a couple of transcriptions with him and he generously threw in a digital transfer of the discs, complete with CEDAR processing.  Kiner sells high quality discs of old time radio material and you can find his cds at his ebay store.

“Phyl Coe Radio Mysteries” is a distinctive series in many respects.  Marking the first appearance of a female detective, the show was syndicated in 1936 to about 250 radio stations and was structured for a unique sponsor promotional gimmick.  The show was sponsored by Philco and local dealers would give listeners a booklet to fill out clues from the mysteries for a chance at cash prizes.  Not only is the namesake detective (”Phyl” being short for “Phyllis”) a sponsor tie in, but the show offered all kinds of opportunities for witnesses and suspects in the mysteries to casually listen to the radio and remark on great quality Philco sets and tubes!

In program 7 of the series, “Last Will and Testament”, Phyllis is called in to solve a murder that centers around a will, a hat pin, and annoying relatives.  Even though we do find out the name of the killer, the complete details of how Phyl solves the mystery isn’t revealed for purposes of the contest.  However, you can match your wits with one otr listener who has posted their possible solutions to the mysteries.

The show was transferred from an original World Broadcasting transcription and restored using CEDAR noise recution by David Kiner.  The matrix number of the disc is BB14924C1.

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